Essay-style assessment is widespread in education. Nonetheless, research shows that this tool can suffer from low reliability and validity. We attribute this problem partly to the boredom that marking multiple essays causes. Specifically, we propose that boredom in markers is associated with systematically lower marks on essays. To test this, we asked participants (N = 100) with an undergraduate degree to mark essays. The majority of these participants had at least some experience with marking. After marking each essay, participants indicated how bored they were. We found an increase in boredom over time and that higher boredom was associated with lower marks. Furthermore, offering a marking rubric did not prevent this problematic impact of boredom. These findings have implications for the validity of essays as an assessment tool and raise concerns about repetitive marking practices in general.

论文式评估在教育中很普遍。尽管如此，研究表明，该工具的可靠性和有效性可能较低。我们将此问题部分归因于标记多篇论文导致的无聊。具体来说，我们认为标记中的无聊与论文的系统性较低的分数有关。为了测试这一点，我们询问了参与者（N = 100）具有本科学位来标记论文。这些参与者中的大多数至少有一些标记经验。在标记每篇文章后，参与者表示他们有多无聊。我们发现随着时间的推移，无聊感会增加，而无聊感越高，分数越低。此外，提供标记量规并不能防止无聊带来的问题影响。这些发现对作为评估工具的论文的有效性产生了影响，并引发了对一般重复评分实践的担忧。